Kerrivan

In the mid to late 1700’s, a group of desperate men, mostly deserters and escaped prisoners, as well as indentured men and boys who had run away from their fishing masters, secluded themselves in the wilderness on the southern shore of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula.

Led by Peter Kerrivan, himself a deserter from the British Navy, these renegades, predominantly Irish, established their hideout on or near Butterpot, a small mountain about nine miles inland from Ferryland. Defying the law and evading all attempts made to capture them, they survived on the great caribou herds that roamed the barrens and by raiding the fishing settlements along the coast. Known as the Society of Masterless Men, their legend is one of the most exciting and daring in Newfoundland’s rich and colorful past.